


Choices

by sardonicsmiley



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Badass Rodney McKay, Hostage Situations, Kidnapping, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-03-01
Updated: 2008-03-01
Packaged: 2020-12-28 07:37:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21133058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sardonicsmiley/pseuds/sardonicsmiley
Summary: Rodney saves Nancy's life. And the east coast.





	Choices

**Author's Note:**

> And then [lwdagreat](http://lwdagreat.livejournal.com/) wanted someone on Earth to get the full Rodney McKay experience and realize how awesome he is while his team is all smug and gloat-y about it. One of the options for people to get Rodney-smacked was ex-wife Nancy. And how I am expected to resist that?

Leaving well enough alone had never been a skill Nancy had very much use for. It had cost her a marriage once upon a time, but it had also helped her get where she was. She had decided long ago that the pros outweighed the cons, and made peace with the part of herself that had to poke and prod. 

Unfortunately, she's starting to realize that the present situation is a huge check in the con column. 

Nancy tries to keep her breathing under control as the man behind her digs his gun harder into the small of her back. The wind is whipping her hair around, chilling her down to her bones, and she wants nothing more than to wrap her arms around herself but they'd ordered her to keep her hands on her head and she doesn't dare disobey. 

Beside her, the strange man who is supposedly on her side wipes the back of his hand over his bloody mouth and sneers up at their guards. His blue eyes are flat and hard, angry and cold as the ice they've stolen their color from, his voice just as chilly, "That the best you can do?" 

The guard's expression twists up, all fury, and he draws his hand back again. Before he can deliver the blow the bleeding man is jerking forward, bashing his shoulder into the man's chest and shouting, "Go! Run! Find John!" 

Nancy hesitates for just a second, but the guard who had a gun on her is already moving towards the stranger. She turns, heart pounding hard in her chest, and takes off as fast as she can across the field. Her heels keep turning and she kicks them off, keeps running. She's not sure how she's supposed to find John, she didn't even know John was here. 

There's a gunshot, and she shrieks, throws her arms up over her head as some useless instinct kicks in in the back of her skull. But there's no burning pain, and she makes herself keep running, ignoring the pain in her feet and the fire in her lungs. 

Running into a giant man does not improve her day. Nancy screams again, jerking as the huge man holds her steady, and then John is there, raising his voice to be heard over her, "Nancy! Nancy _it's fine_. Where the fuck is McKay?" 

Nancy blinks at him. She wonders if this is what he always looked like when he was doing his little secret missions all the time, hard and blank. Her stomach turns over again, and John takes a step towards her that she can't help but read as menacing, repeats himself, "Where the fuck is McKay?" 

She blurts, "I don't know who that is." 

John draws up short, all the color draining out of his face. The loss in his expression is almost a tangible thing, and it hits Nancy hard in her gut. John's voice is carefully controlled, "He ran off without my permission to get you out of there. Are you telling me you escaped on your own?" 

Nancy jerks, not sure if she should be more hurt by the implication that John didn't want her rescued or that he doesn't think she's capable of rescuing herself. She makes herself push past that, because the stony expression on John's face is rapidly becoming something closer to desperation. She says, "There was a man, um, blue eyes? Balding? He came out of nowhere and told them that he wanted to do a hostage exchange."

John curses, and the big man shakes her, the words tear out of her throat, "He told me to run. To find you." 

John jerks his head to the side, mouth thinning out. His voice is low and hard, "Stay here with Major Lorne. Ronon, Teyla, let's go." 

Nancy finds herself shoved to the side, and blurts out before they can disappear, "Wait! There's a bomb!" Not that they needed her to tell them. The sky splits apart, sound slamming down on them like a physical blow, the air flashing to fire and back again. 

When Nancy's head stops spinning she's lying on her back, staring up at the sky. Her ears are ringing and she pushes herself up onto her elbows, blinking around numbly. John is already pushing to his feet, the giant is helping a woman up, and they're all wearing tight, broken expressions. 

There's a pause where none of them move, and then there's a flash of movement from the crest of the hill. Nancy blinks dazedly up at the figure stumbling down the hill, and after a moment John notices her attention, turns to see what she's looking at. 

She can't hear if he makes a sound, but he jerks full bodied, and then John is running. Nancy watches, her mouth falling open in surprise as John hits the man that saved her; McKay, she supposes, his arms going around the man, pulling him in tight against John's chest.

Nancy stares while John balls his hands into the back of McKay's singed jacket, rocking him back and forth. It doesn't quite fit with anything she's ever known about her ex previously, this open desperation and willingness to touch.

Nancy swallows and her ears pop and just like that there's sound again. John is shouting, "—thinking? Jesus Christ, Rodney, going up against the Trust?"

McKay—Rodney, the man that John hugs—shrugs before he says, "They would have killed her. And blown up half the east coast, too. I almost didn't get the payload out of the bomb in time, that explosion was just the detonator, we'd have all been killed and I couldn't—"

John cuts him off, shifting back to grab the man's shoulders and shake him, "I don't care. I didn't care. God, Rodney. Don't you know by now that's not what I would choose?" 

Rodney blinks, and then his expression softens, he smiles with one side of his bloody mouth. Nancy gives up trying to make sense of the day, flops back down onto her back, and consents to passing out.


End file.
